Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls(29)

I’m not sure why he chose the women’s lounge rather than the men’s. Perhaps it was closer or maybe there was no men’s lounge. One way or the other, even now, all these many years later, it shames me to think of it. The idea of holing up in a bathroom, of hogging the whole thing just so that you can hang out with someone who will never, under any circumstances, return your interest, makes me cringe. Especially given that this—the “dressing room,” it was called—was Amtrak’s one meager attempt to recapture some glamour. It amounted to a small chamber with a window—a space not much bigger than a closet. There was an area to sit while brushing your hair or applying makeup, and a mirror to look into while you did it. A second, inner door led to a sink and toilet, but we kept that shut and installed ourselves on the carpeted floor.

Johnny had brought our plastic cups from the bar, and after settling in, he poured us each a drink. I felt boneless, as if I’d been filleted; yet still I managed to load the pipe and hold my lighter to the bowl. Looking up through the window, I could see the moon, which struck me, in my half-conscious state, as flat and unnaturally bright, a sort of glowing Pringle.

“Do you think we can turn that overhead light off?” I asked.

“No problem, Chief.”

It was he who brought up the subject of sex. One moment I was asking if his mom gave him a discount on his drugs, and the next thing I knew he was telling me about this woman he’d recently slept with. “A fatty,” he called her. “A bloodsucker.” Johnny also told me that the older he got, the harder it was to get it up. “I’ll be totally into it and then it’s like, ‘What the f*ck?’ You know?”

“Oh, definitely,” I said.

He poured more vodka into his plastic cup and swirled it around, as if it were a fine cognac that needed to breathe. “You get into a lot of fights?” he asked.

“Arguments?”

“No,” he said. “I mean with your fists. You ever punch people?”

I relit the pipe and thought of the dustup my former boyfriend and I had had before I left. It was the first time since the fifth grade that I’d hit someone not directly related to me, and it left me feeling like a Grade A moron. This had a lot to do with my punch, which was actually more of a slap. To make it worse, I’d then slipped on the icy sidewalk and fallen into a bank of soft gray snow.





There was no need to answer Johnny’s fistfight question. The subject had been raised for his benefit rather than mine, an excuse to bemoan the circumference of his biceps. Back when he was boxing, the one on the right had measured seventeen and a half inches. “Now it’s less than fourteen,” he told me. “I’m shrinking before my very f*cking eyes.”

“Well, can’t you fatten it back up somehow?” I asked. “You’re young. I mean, just how hard can it be to gain weight?”

“The problem isn’t gaining weight, it’s gaining it in the right place,” Johnny said. “Two six-packs a day might swell my stomach, but it’s not doing shit for my arms.”

“Maybe you could lift the cans for a while before opening them,” I offered. “That should count for something, shouldn’t it?”

Johnny flattened his voice. “You’re a regular comedian, aren’t you? Keep it up and maybe you can open for that * in the bar.” A minute of silence and then he relit the pipe, took a hit, and passed it my way. “Look at us,” he said, and he let out a long sigh. “A couple of first-class f*cking losers.”

I wanted to defend myself, to at least point out that we were in second class, but then somebody knocked on the door. “Go away,” Johnny said. “The bathroom’s closed until tomorrow.” A minute later there came another knock, this one harder, and before we could respond a key turned and a security guard entered. It wouldn’t have worked to deny anything: the room stunk of pot and cigarette smoke. There was the half-empty bottle of vodka, the plastic cups turned on their sides. Put a couple of lamp shades on our heads, and the picture would have been complete.

I suppose the guard could have made some trouble—confiscated our dope, had us arrested at the next stop—but instead he just told us to take a hike, no easy feat on a train. Johnny and I parted without saying good night, I staggering off to my assigned seat, and he going, I assumed, to his. I saw him again the following morning, back in the bar car. Whatever spell had been cast the night before was broken, and he was just another alcoholic starting his day with a shot and a chaser. As I ordered a coffee, the black man told a joke about a witch with one breast.

“Give it a rest,” the woman in the decorative sweatshirt said.





I smoked a few cigarettes and then returned to my seat, nursing what promised to be a two-day headache. While slumped against the window, trying unsuccessfully to sleep, I thought of a trip to Greece I’d taken in August 1982. I was twenty-five that summer and flew by myself from Raleigh to Athens. A few days after arriving, I was joined by my father, my brother, and my sister Lisa. The four of us traveled around the country, and when they went back to North Carolina I took a bus to the port city of Patras. From there I sailed to Brindisi, Italy, wondering all the while why I hadn’t returned with the rest of my family. In theory it was wonderful—a European adventure. I was too self-conscious to enjoy it, though, too timid, and it stymied me that I couldn’t speak the language.